Chapter 1
Rennix
“Life has a way of putting you where you need to be, even though it makes absolutely no sense to you at the time. Sometimes changes are necessary, changes in scenery, self, and even sensory are necessary. It’s up to us to decide if we’re ready for the change or gonna let life and that transition period pass us by.”
The chocolate shorty on my TV babbled, talking about her come up. I didn’t know how I ended up on this channel, but I hadn’t bothered to change it after hearing her voice. Instead, I settled into her interview. She spoke some true shit, some things I resonated with but wouldn’t utter aloud to a soul, not even my twin. He was a few minutes older and felt like he knew everything. He didn’t. If anything, he was just as clueless out here as me.
Shorty on the TV talked about change like it was a potential opportunity offered as a contract when in fact it wasn’t. Change happened whether you liked it or not. Folks had absolutely no choice but to either fall in line or watch life happen from the trunk. Life changed at its own speed, not at the time or pace of any man.
I blinked a few times, eyes landing back on Kendall, an up and coming rapper in the city. Sweetheart had flow and cadence like no other, things most rappers didn’t. It was natural to her though, most of them if they could spit that. Chicagoans had an accent and self-awareness like no other. It was a wonder everybody wasn’t a rapper or poet the way they spoke and carried.
“Nah, I just knew nobody was gonna save me, so I had to save myself.”She answered a question I didn’t hear asked because I was in my own thoughts. My mind involuntarily traveled back to the change that seemingly grabbed me by the ear like Big Mama used to.
On a normal day I was home minding my business, handling some computer job for my brother when my front porch camera alerted me to movement. By it being five in the morning, I was on edge. When I pulled up the monitor, my screen immediately showed a figure sitting on the top step like he owned it, tossing back a bottle. Luckily I recognized the figure or else I would’ve gone out there and tuned his ass up. I wasn’t the pop up on me type and anybody who knew me knew it.
I opened the door, and there he sat, back to me, but his drunk ass apparently heard it open, because he spoke before I could ask what the hell he was doing here.
“Knew you were up, son. Never been the type to sleep.” He spoke like he knew me. He didn’t know anything about me or my brother. Ross had never stuck around long enough.
“What the fuck you doing here?”
He sipped from the pint in his hand before glancing over his shoulder at me. “I’m dying.”
“Good shit. You still haven’t told me why you here.”
He laughed dryly. “I deserved that.”
“And a lotta other shit. I’m sure you ain’t here to tell me ’bout your diagnosis. ’Cause if you are, I’on wanna hear it.”
“You have a brother.”
“No shit, drunk ass fool. His name is Reminisce.”
“Not him. Dimitri. They call him God back home.”
This was news to me. Because as far as I knew, my brother and I were the only offspring of his drunk ass sack. Back in the day I heard my pops was somebody in the streets, but life happened and karma caught that ass.
“And a sister. Jade. She looks just like my mother from what I remember.”
“What the fuck do you mean, Ross?”
“Exactly what I said. I wasn’t in their life either.” He took another sip from the brown liquor and I wanted to kick his drunk ass in his back, but I didn’t. I instead stepped out onto the porch, eyes burning a hole in the back of his head.
“You say that like you want a cookie or something.”
“I don’t. I just wanted you to know before I die, you have two other siblings out there, possibly three.” He laughed like any of this was funny. Ross had never been a fixture in me or my brother’s lives but the audacity of this fool to pop up to my spot dropping gems.
“They got your last name too?” I asked, barely keeping my anger at bay.
“Nah. Their folks gave them theirs. Hines or something like that.” He almost sounded disgruntled. “Oh and their mother’s sister might’ve had one for me too. I don’t know his name. It was a mistake; she could’ve rectified it.”
I had heard enough. “Aight, now get your drunk, half-dead ass off my property.”
My eyes popped open quickly, and at once I was back in the present, in my office in a room that I had no say-so indecorating. Jade had done everything and made sure I was sent the bill when she finished.
That was the last conversation I had with Ross before we came here. That night I called my twin Reminisce, the only fool I knew who got less sleep than me. Who knew, after doing my own research, the moment I told him they existed we’d be on the first thing smoking to a city we didn’t know anything about. It was supposed to be a quick visit but became more.
We got here, and the city grew on us, him more than me. Long story short, we decided to settle down here. It was somewhat of an easy decision because neither of us fucked with Ross. For as long as we had been alive, we only had our mother and grandmother. Mom died a few years back, and Grandma ten years before her, so nah, there was nothing there for us. Now, almost a year later, I had opened my own business and was looking to open a second location on the outskirts of the city. I owned a gentleman’s club that not only sold what was needed, but also pastries. I’d gotten the idea one day in the middle of my kitchen going through my grandmother’s recipe box. She left me that shit even though I didn’t do any type of baking. Long story short, I put her recipes to good use in my club.
